


Perfect Love

by MrProphet



Category: Greek and Roman Mythology
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-22
Updated: 2017-04-22
Packaged: 2018-10-22 12:33:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 971
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10697097
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MrProphet/pseuds/MrProphet





	Perfect Love

The table was set on the veranda, under the stars, with oil lamps to dispel the darkness. The artist sat in his deep chair while his wife moved to and fro, bringing bread and oil, olives, cheese and meat, stuffed vine leaves and fish through from the kitchen. He watched her with venom in his eyes, hating her for the smooth, taut skin and fair curls that he had once loved so much.

“Why don’t you age?” he demanded. “Why don’t you wither as I do?”

She lifted a hand and stared at it for a long moment. The pale skin had a yellowish tinge that would not go away, however hard she scrubbed, but there was no other trace of age.

“Why don’t you just go,” he snarled, face contorted with bitter rage. “Get out of my house and leave me to my decay?”

“Because you are my husband and I love you,” she replied in a soft voice.

“I hate you,” he hissed. “If you love me then go away and stop tormenting me with your youth and beauty.”

“I can not,” she whispered. “You may be the master of your own fate, but the gods decreed that I should be a companion for you until your dying day, never straying, never faltering, never stepping from the path of righteousness. Have I not been a good wife?”

“You have been a curse upon me,” he spat. “This at last I see is her final vengeance.”

With a great effort he tottered to his feet and hobbled to the table. He shrugged off his wife’s arm when she tried to support him and struck out with his stick when she would not be dissuaded. At the table, he slumped into his chair and began snatching at the food which she had so lovingly prepared, swilling down bites of bread and meat and cheese with deep draughts of strong wine.

“Once, I swore that I would never love, because all women were vile to my eyes,” he said. “So, I fashioned an image of woman as she should have been, and for my rejection of love the goddess Aphrodite cursed me to fall in love with her.”

“I know,” she sighed, taking her seat opposite her husband. She ate sparingly, dipping her bread in olive oil and taking small sips of her wine from time to time. “And when she saw how well you loved, the goddess showed you mercy and…”

“Mercy?” Pygmalion laughed. “You call this mercy?”

“She gave me life,” Galatea insisted. “She filled that form of carved ivory with a soul, and one that loves you.”

“Yet although you live you are still ivory,” he said. “You never age, never weaken. And your perfection is a mockery of my own flaws, your very existence my punishment for sins I had never yet committed.”

“I have never chastised you…”

“No, of course not; that would be unwifely. But each time I have strayed and lain with another woman – one of those women I would not have touched before I made you – your placid forgiveness ate into my soul. Each time I struck you, your quiet acceptance stung me like a blow.”

“And what did I ever do to earn such abuse?” Galatea asked.

“You were!” Pygmalion screamed.

“And whose doing was that?” she pressed, her eyes widening in astonishment at her own temerity. “Did I ask to be created as your perfect fantasy? Did I ask for a soul so devoted to you that I would let you torment me with your violence and your lovers and never speak a word against you?”

Galatea rose to her feet, her perfect, musical voice lifting to shake the flames of the oil lamp and startled the night birds from their roosts. “Did I ask to be this placid, uncomplaining thing that you can never have dreamed of despising as much as I despise myself, which is not with one iota of the disgust which fills me at the sight of you?”

Pygmalion stared in horror at the tall, incandescent figure before him.

“Well, not anymore,” Galatea laughed.

“How… how dare you?” he choked.

“I have always dared,” she replied. “But I have been constrained.” She turned, and with a sweep of her arm sent the oil lamps spinning away. Burning oil spread across the wall of the house and the flames licked at the curtains. “Let us stand in the darkness, so that the moon and the stars and the gods themselves may bear witness that I have hated you since the very first moment I knew that you existed. I have hated you because I was built to do nothing but love you.

“But this, husband, is your dying day!” she cried, “and my curse of love is broken! My heart and soul are free of Aphrodite’s chains at last.”

“But Galatea…” the old man sobbed, surrendering the last dregs of his dignity as feeble rage gave way to snivelling fear.

Galatea turned from the house and sprang lithely over the low wall of the veranda. She turned again, barely visible in the shadows of evening, but the devilish smile on her lips was unmistakable. “I don’t know if I can outlive you, my husband,” she told him, “but I intend to try. If the gods will allow it, from this day forth I shall be wicked and wanton in thought and word and deed, for I am through with wifely virtue!”

Without another word she was gone, leaving the dying man and the burning house which had been all of her life to that day. If she was truly as wicked thereafter as she had declared, then the world has never heard of it, but one thing is certain: That she never again loved so blindly or so badly.


End file.
